


Aching Dawn of Hope

by yet_intrepid



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Thangorodrim, The sun - Freeform, coming of fingolfin, feanoreans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 06:53:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sun rises for the first time, sent from Valinor, as Maedhros hangs upon Thangorodrim and hears the trumpets of Fingolfin's host. Perhaps, he dares to think, he is not abandoned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aching Dawn of Hope

**Author's Note:**

> (The first rising of the Sun in Middle-Earth was in the West; it switched to rising in the East after the Valar sorted out some difficulties with the Maia who steered the Moon.)

The first time Maedhros sees the Sun, he is hanging by his wrist from Thangorodrim and he thinks that the pink and orange light on the Western horizon is fabricated by his pain-dazed eyes. The pain is pink and orange today: less hot, perhaps, but leaving him in keen awareness of his flesh, of the straining muscles which bear his bodyweight, of the rawness of his wrist under the steel.

But although he shuts his eyes and inhales through his teeth to clear his head, the light grows. So he squints and he waits and he wonders, and then the gold erupts.

And it hurts, for he has seen only starlight and firelight and a little moonlight since the death of the Trees—but oh, it is warm. It streams over the cliffs like molten metal, like shimmering cloth, like music. After the first long and desperate look, he closes his eyes again so he can soak in it like the purest water. With all the power of his will, he thinks about the light and the warmth, and he does not think about his arm or the cliff or his future.

But then he hears the trumpets.

Their music, too, is fiery golden light. It floods him with hope, bright and fierce and painful. Unlooked-for. Impossible, if he questions it, but he refuses to do so.

Instead he waits. For there is one note he has not heard, the pitch and tone of a horn he has known since his childhood, and he bears the aching hope with bated breath until at last—at long last—it echoes up to him.

Then his lips burst open and he shouts, because Fingon is here; Fingon is blowing his horn at Morgoth’s very gates and the aching dawn of hope has burst into both radiant joy and burning fear.

He shouts Fingon’s name.

He shouts until the Moon passes the Sun and the Sun retreats far behind him into the East. Then, as the world grows cold again, as his pain turns sharp silver and inky black, as the echoes of his voice become mocking, he remembers the words of the prophecy:

_Not even the echo of your lamentation shall pass over the mountains._

And in the first fading of the Sun Maedhros weeps, for he asked not that the Valar should hear him but only the Eldar, and even this mercy was taken away.


End file.
